Residents in the dark over blackout

Power and Water's chief executive, Alan White, says staff are walking along 60 kilometres of powerline to find the cause of the outage.

"Because it's a long rural line which extends all the way to Jay Creek community, the fault could be anywhere along that line and that powerline traverses through some pretty heavy country, so it could be anything that caused it, could be a bird, a faulty insulator or worst case is always a vehicle," he said.